TWIN FALLS, Idaho (AP) - He is perhaps the most famous person to ever graduate from Twin Falls High School.

But no one knew it until Tuesday.

W. Mark Felt, the small-town boy who played on the Bruins basketball team and graduated with the Class of 1931, would go on to hold the No. 2 job in the FBI. But what will give him a permanent place in the history books is his role as the secret Washington Post source on Watergate - the scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

After three decades of silence, Felt, who now lives in Santa Rosa, Calif., revealed to Vanity Fair magazine that he is indeed "Deep Throat," the man who met with Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward in dark parking garages late at night to give him the clues he needed to investigate the break-in at National Democratic Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel.

Former Washington Post reporters Woodward and Carl Bernstein, as well as their former editor Ben Bradlee, also kept the secret until after Felt's admission. It was only then that they confirmed Deep Throat's identity.

It didn't take long for news organizations - both local and national - to come calling in Twin Falls, looking for anything they could find on Felt's early years. Reporters from television stations throughout Idaho traveled to Twin Falls to get copies of photos of Felt from old high school yearbooks. Cecil Wright, a supervisor at the Twin Falls Public Library, said the phone began ringing at 9:30 a.m. from reporters calling to ask if the library had a 1931 Twin Falls High School yearbook. Then they started stopping by.

The same thing happened at Twin Falls High School. Principal Ben Allen said the school had received calls from both local and national news organizations wanting to know more about the young Felt.

"We pulled his grades," Allen said. "He was an above-average student with an upper-class ranking."

Allen said he had a lot of respect for what Felt did.

"He put his career on the line," Allen said. "He tried to right a wrong. I think him staying silent all these years proves he didn't do it for monetary reasons."

Allen said Felt's true identity could spark a renewed interest in Watergate among his students.

"Anytime something is close to home, it makes it more relative," Allen said.

He said the fact that Felt went from Twin Falls High School to become the No. 2 man in the FBI reminds his students that, "You can do anything you want to do, even if you're from Twin Falls, Idaho."

Richard High was the editor of The Times-News during the Watergate years. Today, he's the publisher of The North County Times, an Oceanside, Calif.-based daily paper owned by Lee Enterprises, which also owns The Times-News.

High said The Times-News was one of the few papers that gave The Washington Post stories good play.

"We had them on Page One all the way through," High said. "That was unusual because a lot of papers were burying it or not running it."

The Times-News later published transcripts of the famous Nixon tapes.

"We called for his resignation as soon as the tapes came out," High said.

"I think it was a story that had to be told," said State Sen. Charles Coiner, whose late father, Charles Coiner Sr. went to school with Felt. "Without Deep Throat, the story might never have come out."

Walt Minnick of Boise, former chief executive officer of a structural building materials company that built the Norco Windows building in Twin Falls, had a front-row seat to the Watergate crisis. He was a White House staffer in charge of government policy on illegal drugs during the Nixon years and once shared an office with G. Gordon Liddy, the former FBI agent who helped plan the Watergate break-in and eventually spent time in prison. Minnick said that of all the Watergate players, Liddy was definitely the most colorful.

"Gordon Liddy had a very unbalanced and bizarre personality," Minnick said. "I watched him burn a hole in his forearm one day with his cigarette lighter at a birthday party for a secretary. No one could stay in the room because of the smell of scorched flesh."

Minnick, who started at the White House in August 1971, quit the Monday following the Saturday Night Massacre in fall 1973. The Saturday Night Massacre, as it came to be known, was when Attorney General Eliot L. Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus resigned their posts rather than obey Nixon's order to fire Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor appointed to investigate Watergate. Nixon named Solicitor General Robert Bork acting attorney general and he carried out the president's order to fire Cox - an action Minnick said would later cost Bork a seat on the Supreme Court.

"That's why Robert Bork was never confirmed to the Supreme Court, despite being an excellent jurist - because Ruckelshaus and Richardson became national heroes," Minnick said. "They basically stood up to the president at the cost of their jobs."

Minnick said tension was high during the Watergate years.

"There was a siege mentality," Minnick said. "We worked for the president and he was day by day being torn apart in the press and in Congress. It was becoming more and more clear that he and his key staff were involved in the break-in and the cover-up of Watergate."

Minnick quit on principle following the Saturday Night Massacre.

"I resigned the following Monday because I felt in good conscience I could no longer work for the president," Minnick said. "I walked in and quit."

Minnick said he thought Deep Throat was either former White House counsel John Dean or, more likely, Dean's deputy Fred Fielding. However, that Felt turned out to be the source didn't surprise him because the FBI would have had access to the information that was leaked to The Washington Post. What amazes Minnick is that people were able to keep Deep Throat's identity secret so long.

"I think it's a remarkable accomplishment," Minnick said. "I also think it's remarkable that Woodward, Bernstein and Ben Bradlee (kept the secret) as well."